hello, my wife and i have been together for 13 years married

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hello, my wife and i have been together for 13 years married for 7, i have two children from a previous marriage and she has two, mine are girl 14,boy 16, hers are girl 16 and girl 23, her 23 yearold left to live with her dad at 15 150 miles away and she did it in a bad way. her 16 yearold was sent to live with her dad when she was 12(two different fathers)by her mother. I had faught for custody of my two since the day i met my wife and she suported the fight. I won custody of my son when he was 5 but didnt want to split the kids up so i gave their mother a year to fix her issues and she did for awhile anyway he came to live with us 3 years ago, i am on disability due to major spine diseases, so i get a check for him also, we are having problems now with where our responsibilities lie. My son will be going to college after high school and my credit was sacrificed after she quit/fired from her job and saved hers. she now wants to put all of our resources into her oldest daughter and i am having problems with not being able to help my son, I feel the child living with us is the first resposibility, she is now working so its not just my income i will stop here and let you read this

I think you need to stand up for your kids, too. If she wants extra support for her kids, she should be contacting their fathers since the kids had been living with them. I also agree that your resources stay to help those still in the house as a priority. With your disability and both of you having very restricted income, it would only hurt your kids worse to promise them a certain level of help and them have to back out just to pay your routine living expenses.

You two may also have to change your expectations of what you can provide for kids. College costs continue to rise and few kids make it through college without using student loans. Your kids need to be realistic in fighting for scholarships, using community colleges for the first year or two, working while in school, and using student loans wisely. Your goal, and their expectation, should not be a major financial burden being placed on YOUR shoulders.

I would encourage you and your wife to make a budget to know where your money is going, and make sure you're saving at least 3 to 6 months of income needs in a savings account in case something should happen. After that has been figured out, then it's time to see what you could even afford to set aside for college costs. The most fair thing would be to split that amount evenly among the four kids. But if her children's fathers want to help, then shift your resources more towards your two kids, so each child is still getting the same amount of help regardless of how many parents are helping. But it would be unfair to help the oldest daughter, and then not have enough left over to help the next three (especially when the next three might be in college at the same time!).

I will tell you that...the things you have to go through to be an Expert are quite rigorous.

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